God is Still on the Throne!

Yes - Another Update! What’s up with that??????

Ok, so at the moment it looks a though our blogging is coming in some huge spurts after some very long gaps (but I suppose this is often the case in mission work. Harvesting is usually a lot more exciting and newsworthy that sowing and watering, but all of it is necessary J). Anyway, there are just so many really cool things happening around us these days that we want to share about! So, here is another very cool story – this time about something that just happened here on our YWAM base.

Last Wednesday we had the most amazing prayer time at the end of our staff meeting. At the moment, we have a Discipleship Training School (DTS) happening on our base, and last week they were preparing to go on their 10 week outreach to Turkey, Scotland, and possibly North Africa. As you can imagine, sending 27 people out to all of these places for 10 weeks is a very expensive venture. Well, as with all of us in YWAM, all 27 of these students and leaders had to raise their own money to go on the outreach. With 3 days to go they still had about £5,000 ($8,000) to raise. So, at the end of our weekly staff meeting, we decided to go down to the DTS class room and stand in faith with them in praying that God would provide all that they needed by the time that they needed it (3 days).

Ok, before I go on, let me go back a week to our previous staff meeting. At that meeting, one of the couples on staff here felt led to give a very big donation toward the cost of a building YWAM had just purchased. They did it not only to help supply the need, but also as a prophetic act believing that in doing so it would provide a breakthrough in the spiritual realm over our YWAM community in general concerning finances. In addition to the huge financial need that we have as a base to pay off the recently purchased Gatehouse, many of the staff and students had been struggling financially. In the present economy, it is easy to be deceived by the enemy into believing that God is somehow bound by the financial crisis, or that He can’t still provide for us in the midst of it. Believing that God IS OUR SOURCE, that He is above all things and owns all things, they gave their donation as an act of defiance to the spirit of this world and to the world’s economy believing that God can provide in ANY circumstances, breaking the strongholds of fear, poverty, greed, and anything else that sets itself up against the work of the Kingdom being carried out through the people and ministries on our base.

Ok, now fast forward back to our prayer time for the DTS last Wednesday. When we walked into the classroom, we saw that the school leaders had written a list of everyone who still had a need and how much they needed on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. As I said before, all the needs added up to over £5,000 ($8,000). Well, we began praying for the release of finances over these needs, proclaiming the sovereignty of God and the faithfulness of God, and breaking the lies of the enemy we have believed toward money. Almost immediately staff and students began going up to the school leader saying they would give toward the needs of the others. Within 15 minutes everyone’s need was completely cancelled - £5,000 just like that! We kept praying, and within 5 more minutes the team was £2000 in the positive!

Wow!!!! In less than 20 minutes the Lord had provided over £7,000 ($11,000) from within our own staff and students – all of us missionaries living entirely on support ourselves!!!!!! (and yes, just before Christmas, in the midst of a very dire economic climate)! The prophet Malachi speaks of a vast heavenly storehouse that contains more financial resources than we could ever even handle, and he says that the key to unlocking it is generosity! God’s economy operates on a completely different set of principles than the world’s economy. The western world’s economy is largely based on (and even relies on) greed and extreme debt, while God’s divine economy is based on contentment and extravagant generosity. It’s foolishness in the eyes of the world, and it usually doesn’t even add up – BUT IT WORKS!!!!!!! Praise God!

Well, we just wanted to encourage you (and inspire you) with this testimony. God has designed an economic system that relies on radical living, radical faith, radical obedience, and radical generosity, and when we as Christians begin to walk in this way concerning our finances, He promises that He will ‘throw open the floodgates of Heaven and pour out so much blessing that we will not have room enough for it.’ (Malachi 3:10).